I suppose a better, more sophisticated person would write up all the reasons John McCain would state that President Obama is directly responsible for the Orlando shootings because Iraq and then immediately walk back his remarks is stupid, offensive, obnoxious, and just flat our wrong, but this is Balloon Juice and you know I’m not that person. So instead, here is this:
Fuck you. Go eat some tapioca and play some bingo. Also too, Palin.
raven
You know he was a POW?
RaflW
I’ll just leave this right here.
redshirt
Gads I hope he loses, depriving Sunday talk shows of a hitherto unlimited resource.
I hope he loses first to a wingnut in the Primary.
Corner Stone
@RaflW: Yikes.
RaflW
@Corner Stone: Yeah.
Corner Stone
What a sad, desperate old fool. After Sherf Joe endorsed Trump I guess Johnny saw his political life coming to an abrupt end if he didn’t suck on Trump nuts.
RaflW
The wayback machine. It’s a bitch.
D58826
The democrats did not like Reagan or W but I don’t remember any leading democrat accuse the President of treason as the GOP does. Heck if a democrat suggested that W’;s tie didn’t match his shirt the GOP pitched a fit about not supporting the President in war time.
Trump is the visual manifestation of the perverted GOP ID
PaulWartenberg2016
Isn’t McCain facing a primary challenger from a more extremist anti-immigrant Trumpshirt this month?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
You can throw him on the ever growing pile of bitter old men who feel that they lost their manhood to Barack Obama, and it’s their only juice at this point. Sad!
dmsilev
@D58826: Well, given Iran-Contra, one could make a decent case re:Reagan…
Iowa Old Lady
Does anybody fall for the old “I misspoke” gag?
dmsilev
There’s some sweet sweet schadenfreude in knowing that John McCain has woken up every day for the past 7.5 years to the thought that Barack Obama is President and he is not.
father pussbucket
@D58826:
Why, yes. Yes, he is.
redshirt
@raven: I never heard that before.
rikyrah
Tell the truth, Cole.
Phuck Country Last.
dedc79
He didn’t really walk back his remarks. He just substituted in another BS attack on the President in their place.
Derelict
So, Donald Trump states publicly that McCain “is no hero. He got captured. I prefer people who don’t get captured,” and McCain’s first instinct is to line up to suck Trump’s dick. And now, after the worst mass shooting in modern American history, his first instinct is to blame Obama for something Bush did.
What a craven cowardly asshole!
rikyrah
And, him losing to Barack Obama will be in every obituary about him.
raven
@redshirt: Yea, and he was a loooser because he got shot down and captured.
Chris
A blogger I read once described John McCain as “a juvenile delinquent who became a senile delinquent.” I still think it’s spot on.
The amount of goodwill he had from Vietnam is used up and has been for years now.
WaterGirl
@Iowa Old Lady: You know, I wasn’t very young at all when I learned that my older would say “just kidding” when she said something that didn’t go over well. So my answer to your question would be, “no, I don’t think anyone over the age of reason falls for that one”.
dogwood
Don’t have cable, but went on YouTube the other day to catch up on some of the cable chatter about Trump. Morning Joe had a brief bit with Jeff Flake who thinks Arizona is very much in play. He expects the Hispanic vote share to increase, but noted that it would be white voters as well who would reject Trump. Watching that interview, I had to wonder why Flake isn’t being groomed as a national candidate.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev:
Yes. Yes there is!
Edit: I swear I wrote that without ever seeing the comment that followed yours, which was almost identical to mine, even though we were talking about entirely different things.
RaflW
Unfortunately, his forced retirement in November will just mean he has more time to be on the frvuking TeeVee.
FlipYrWhig
This is good news! For John McCain!
Mike J
You can donate here:
http://www.kirkpatrickforsenate.com/
burnspbesq
Not closely related, and not exactly shocking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/04/white-resentment-is-fueling-opposition-to-gun-control-researchers-say/
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Shhhh, he doesn’t like to talk about that!
MattF
The Donald has Trumped all the dogwhistles. McCain needs to get with the new era, if he can.
Hoodie
@dogwood: Because he isn’t flakey enough.
Just One More Canuck
I would say that he has sacrificed any remaining self-respect and dignity he had, but that would assume he ever had any to begin with.
Major Major Major Major
Good god.
We’re talking about somebody who probably couldn’t find Syria on a map here, why does the “pledged allegiance to ISIS” thing keep coming up I know why shut up I’m just mad as hell.
JPL
@MattF: He’s running to be Trump’s VP,
Patricia Kayden
@raven: Accordingly to Trump, he’s a loser because he was a POW. Yet, McCain is now a vocal Trump supporter. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Schlemazel Khan
@raven:
Who? John McCain? If that were true why has nobody ever mentioned that before? It might have made a difference if people knew that
James E Powell
@redshirt:
MSNBC will gladly give him his own show
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: That would be a fitting denouement to his career.
Mary
@dogwood: He’s demonstrated a willingness to work with Democrats, even if it is on something utterly superficial. That makes him toxic to primary voters.
Patricia Kayden
@Just One More Canuck: I could never understand why liberal media personalities like Jon Stewart were so fascinated by McCain. I’ve never cared for him. All that talk about him being a maverick used to work my nerves. Glad he’s been exposed as a nothing special Republican.
oklahomo
@James E Powell: He and Hewitt can give each other and trump sloppy kisses for an hour or so…
Oatler.
Chuck Todd just creamed his pants because guess who Sunday’s guest will be???
low-tech cyclist
@Chris: Except with the press, which has never gotten off his tire swing, and keeps inviting him back on the Sunday morning talk shows. And they’ve never noticed that he hasn’t been the least bit mavericky since about 2004, when he kissed up to Shrubby so he would have the inside track to the nomination in 2008. Spent 2004-2008 as a standard-issue conservative Republican, and he’s spent all his time since being the Old Man Yelling At Clouds.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: It’s probably also good news for McCain’s wife, now that someone else has volunteered to fuck Sen McCain.
Lolis
Hey, I think tapioca is awesome!!!
McCain has always been a flaming a$$h0le. Glad he is getting some immediate pushback on this one.
Corner Stone
Det Beckett with that damn hair helmet from Season 2 2009 Castle.
hovercraft
The clip of him trying to clean up this mess where he simply repeats it should run with clips of Trump saying the same thing should run in ads non stop till election day. McCain needs to be forced to congratulate Senator Kirkpatrick, and go off and nurse his bitterness over his loss to Obama. It’s been 8 years and yet it still drives everything he does, apparently it’s a big part of his support for Trump. The desire to see Obama era policy reversed. Does he think we are going to re-invade Iraq. Shut up you dangerous old man, go yell at a cloud. If he loses I imagine he may just explode.
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: My money’s on Jeff Sessions. Let’s go full KKK.
Cacti
The existence of a black President has made the angry white men insane with rage.
I hope McCain thinks of his 2008 loss daily, and has to choke down the bile that rises.
Karen S.
@Derelict: McCain did the same thing after Bush the Younger and his gang insulted him and/or his family during the 2000 GOP primaries. McCain had no problem embracing Dubya after that, so it’s no surprise he’d become a Trump boot licker so easily despite Trump’s disparaging remarks about him.
low-tech cyclist
Off topic (like we worry about that around here), I called up Sen. Murphy’s office today to thank him for his filibuster. Then I called my own Congresscritters to tell them I supported what Sen. Murphy was doing, and hoped they did too. (I’m sure they do – I’m in Maryland, and Hoyer’s my House member – but I know they get deluged by calls from the Second Amendment absolutists any time a gun issue comes up, so I wanted to make sure they got at least one call favoring gun control.)
swiftfox
Yes, but….I read other blogs. They don’t need to use four-letter words to express themselves.
Mister Forkbeard
@redshirt: No, no. If McCain loses, he’s even MORE available for talk shows!
Bitter Scribe
John. You lost. It’s been seven years. Get over it already.
Cacti
@swiftfox:
Who said anything about need?
We swear here because it’s fun, not because it’s necessary.
Mnemosyne
@Karen S.:
That’s what I was about to say — W spread that smear about McCain’s adopted daughter being his “illegitimate black child” and McCain just took it. Then he backed down about torture even though he himself was a torture victim.
Party before country is McCain’s motto. Now and always.
slag
Now now. Sure, John McCain pals around with gay-bashing, woman-oppressing racists, but at least all their names are easy to pronounce and spell. Not like these American-born fur’ners running around these days.
Schlemazel Khan
@swiftfox:
We don’t need to use four-letter words either . . . we WANT to!
DAMN! @Cacti: beat me to it!
Peale
Didn’t Mitch Daniels already run for president? Why would drafting him as party savior end differently?
gogol's wife
@low-tech cyclist:
As I said on a thread below, I called Murphy’s and Blumenthal’s offices, and they said they were getting a lot of supportive calls.
Schlemazel Khan
I just heard that a British MP was shot at an event in the North of England. They must be beside themselves in the UK, they are not used to this sort of insanity. Here we would just call it ‘Thursday’ but this is shocking for them.
Corner Stone
Can we put Chuck Todd up first against the wall?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: My friend has seen that vid of GroffSauce and Renee, and she is in rhapsodic agreement with you.
D58826
Paul Ryan is so worried about the constitutional rights of people involved with the no-fly/np-buy list. The constitutional rights of LGBT people not so much.
The man who intervened and tried to save the British MP is a Muslim.
MattF
Many large corporations have decided that the Republican convention is not where they want to be. Reince must be devastated.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel Khan:
Unless this was a different MP, she wasn’t shot, she was stabbed to death.
ETA: Guardian says stabbed and shot, so now I’m confused.
hovercraft
@dogwood:
He is in the so called moderate wing of the party, even though I remember him as being pretty far right in the house, I think that was him.
Emma
@Mnemosyne: According to the Beeb, she was both shot and stabbed. That’s the headline of their latest story which I haven’t had the heart to read yet.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: Reports I saw said she was shot and stabbed multiple times.
hovercraft
@FlipYrWhig:
Is that you Mark Halpern ?
Just One More Canuck
@Patricia Kayden: Yes, he’s just as craven as every other republican
raven
@swiftfox: Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.
raven
@Mnemosyne: Both
Aqualad08
@James E Powell:
Get Off My Lawn with John McCain, Sundays at 7:00 a.m. only on MSNBC….
gogol's wife
@Emma:
It’s horrible. It’s connected to Brexit, apparently.
Roger Moore
@dogwood:
I don’t think being in touch with reality helps with the Republican base.
sigaba
“Straight Talk Express.”
hovercraft
@Schlemazel Khan:
From the BBC
Cat48
You know, when Obama took office, his first drone strike the day was after Not only were we fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Bush was drone striking all the way from Iraq to the Horn of Africa, the day Obama was sworn in.
We should have never gone into Iraq. We destabilized the entire Middle East. I wish it would end, but no one agrees on what the truth is from one day to another. Hopeless!
dogwood
@hovercraft:
You’re probably right. What struck me about the Flake interview was the fact that he answered the questions directly without sounding scripted. He didn’t mention Clinton, Obama or democrats either. He might be a right winger who just doesn’t have the stomach for the totality of the game. I just think he’d be more appealing to the broader electorate than Paul Ryan.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
Totally random, but I didn’t realize that the British word for a politician’s office was their “surgery.” Weird but interesting.
Mnemosyne
@swiftfox:
Just in case, we do have a sarcasm tag now — it’s //
Corner Stone
@Cat48: Whatever it is you have in your hand. Please put it down and get help.
catclub
h/t Trump Apocalypse Watch
who knew?
muddy
@Mnemosyne: It’s not the name of the office, but rather of a type of event. It involves sitting and waiting for one’s turn at an interview, as in waiting at the doctor’s office.
maya
I sincerely hope that John McCain has many, many happy hours in his retirement playing cribbage with Joe Lieberman.
Jay C
@Mnemosyne:
I also had never heard that particular usage before, but apparently, for British MP, their term for meetings with their constituents in their home districts (which is what Jo Cox was doing when she was shot) is called an “advice surgery”: presumably a reference to the equivalent of “doctors’ hours” (?).
The killer’s motivations (if any, he may just be a nut) are still to be investigated: but from the accounts, after pulling a gun on Mrs Cox, he shot her three times, and when she fell to the ground, whipped out a knife and started stabbing away.
RIP Helen Joanne Cox, MP (1974-2016)
PaulWartenberg2016
@redshirt:
Even if McCain loses, the shows will keep inviting him back as a “respected elder” of a Republican party
PaulWartenberg2016
@Oatler.:
BEYONCE?! /faint
Gravenstone
re. the title of this post; likely the verbatim response of every Democrat to come across the story. Fuck that bitter old no wit, indeed.
Elmo
@low-tech cyclist: Hi neighbor!
dogwood
@maya:
McCain is truly pathetic. If he loses his Senate seat he has nothing, and the bitterness will only increase. He doesn’t have the advantage of other Republicans like W and Romney who have some kind of life outside of the public sphere. Cindy lives in Malibu; she’s not gonna change her life for the old coot.
Gravenstone
@James E Powell: You know some marketing “genius” is pitching a John and Megan McCain talkfest.
Major Major Major Major
@Bitter Scribe: I thought you were addressing Cole for a second and got very confused.
RaflW
@catclub: WTF employment contract does a Trump minion draw up? I know a person can sue another person for just about anything, but I’d not imagine that a standard employment at will contract could create grounds for action if the person hired said, “Fuck you I quit” even if the second sentence is “You racist rat bastard.”
And libel is damn near impossible to get traction on with a (racist rat bastard) public figure the ‘wronged’ party. I suppose the play is to waste the chef’s time and money on defense lawyers?
Hardly needs saying, but Trump is a total scumbag. He will, and often does, harass and try to destroy ordinary working people. Why other ordinary working people haven’t figure that out, I can’t understand.*
*Trump’s latest (un)favorables polling suggests that some working folks are seeing through him.
Miss Bianca
@efgoldman: That would be the *fucking* language police, thank you very much.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca:
Fucking do it fucking right..
Gravenstone
@RaflW: I believe the chef in question here is celebrity chef Jeffrey Zakarian. So it’s more than a minion sticking a thumb in Trump’s eye, it someone with cachet in NYC. For that reason, Trump has to destroy him (or die trying).
Schlemazel Khan
@Mnemosyne:
Actually a surgery is an open office time for MPs. If you wanted to talk to your MP there are regular hours they are available to the general public to just stop by & chat, those are called ‘surgeries’. No clue why but I wish I lived in a nation where our elected reps did that and one where they could be reasonably assured they would not be shot at or otherwise assaulted on a regular basis.
EDIT: and I see many got there before I did.
debbie
I’d like the president, at his next opportunity, to state that he does not accept McCain’s non-apology and that he would like McCain to stop lying about the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq which, as McCain well knows, was GWB’s decision.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Fuck the fucking fuckers if they can’t take a joke. Fuck ’em harder if they can.
RaflW
@Gravenstone: Aha. Well, good luck to the two businesspersons who decided not to be associated with the orange head-ferret and his déclassé hotels.
RaflW
@debbie: Obama could casually, but y’know, on twitter, invite McCain over for a beer on the WH patio, it being summer and all. Just to catch up in a less formal setting on NatSec issues.
Sometimes the high road is the best shiv of all.
geg6
@RaflW:
This was a restaurant that was supposed to go into a Trump property. Jeffrey Zakarian and Jose Andres, two major chefs, have backed out of a contract to open their restaurant because they don’t want to be associated with him. They weren’t employees.
RaflW
@geg6: Noted @106. But to further my comment – Maybe we can get some awesome librul judge to affirm that spouting overt racism is in fact damaging to a business venture and that it is actually the FerretFuhrer who is in breach, not the two restauranteurs. IANAL and all that.
maya
@dogwood: Yeah, all he has left is his supposed friendship with Joe L. Maybe not even that anymore.Truly a pathetic old man with no class at all.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Being openly anti-Latino in the restaurant/hotel business is … probably not a good idea, shall we say.
Ruviana
@RaflW: Beer should be served cold IYKWIMAITYD.
feckless
Piss on that Turd.
Fucking Admiral’s son, still has a silver spoon up his ass.